Posts tagged with "Facades Plus":

Technology and big data go hand-in-hand and Boston-based firm Sasaki is one of the firms leading the way. Sasaki's work touches on economic activity, master planning, urban regeneration, and resiliency. Big data is crucial for such work.

Brad Barnett is a director of strategies at Sasaki. Within this position, his role includes city planning, designing, and data visualization as well as engaging designers with people that he described to The Architect's Newspaper(AN) as being "from the pure technology side."

"Cities so far have been inert objects," said Barnett. "They are built to be offices and dwellings. We are looking at them being multi-layered." Barnett continued to explain how society is evolving to cater to technology at varying levels. Sensors can help you park your car, but they can also be used to monitor pedestrian flow within the built environment. The latter is being looked into by Sasaki with traffic signals that can analyze car traffic in Boston.

An example of big data in use can be seen with Sasaki's work in the city of Houston where Sasaki is using data from Yelp! to aid the city's understanding the downtown districts. "This can help them understand which areas are in demand during the day and night and why: for shopping, eating, being entertained etc. This can help us look at what time of day people need access to certain amenities."

Another incidence of this approach being used is evident in Sasaki's plan for New Bedford, a New England town with a working waterfront. By analyzing pedestrian circulation, Sasaki was able to pinpoint areas for potential economic development using data visualization cartographically in the process. Further coverage by AN of that scheme can be seen here.

Technology integration, meanwhile, can be found at the University of Missouri–Kansas City Miller Nichols Library, another project on which the Boston-based firm worked. Here, a dense central core of book stacks was moved to a new wing that housed an Automatic Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS). Subsequently, the reduction in square footage (usually required by traditional book stacks) minimized site disturbance and preserved green space. Energy loads for lighting, temperature, and humidity are all reduced in the ASRS compared to the requirements of spaces that integrate shelving with populated study space.

Sasaki described the original Miller Nichols Library as a "fortress-like structure typical of the Brutalist architectural style of the 1960s." Retrofitting is an emerging topic in architecture discourse as typologies become redundant in certain respects and new technology comes around.

At AN's upcoming Facades+ conference in Boston, this topic will be addressed in a panel on modernist performance retrofitting. Another panel, meanwhile, will look at how urban data is informing facade design. Barnett will be on hand at the event to act as a panel moderator.

The event's co-chair is Senior Associate at Sasaki, Brad Prestbo. Prestbo is also a co-founder of MakeTank!, an upcoming program at the Boston Society of Architects (BSA) that looks how technology is changing the way architects make and build. MakeTank! aims to engage makers throughout New England and aims to serve architecture studios that do not have access to such [technological] facilities. "It is a group devoted to exploring the frontiers of fabrication and design," Prestbo told AN.

To find out more about the Facades+ Boston conference and register, visit facadesplus.com. Seating is limited.

The Architect's Newspaper'sFacades+ conference kicked off today in New York and wasted no time getting into the action. French architect Dominique Perrault opened the conference with a keynote discussing a number of buildings from around the world (three of which are featured here), each utilizing facade systems in different ways, ranging from below-grade skins to "tree-like" designs.
An overarching theme of the projects Perrault presented was the use of the facade as a democratizing tool that filtered between the public and private realms, defining spaces both inside and out. An example of this could be seen with the refurbishment of Pont de Sèvres Towers (now know as "CityLights"), a collection of three office high-rises in Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
Here, "the facade follows you into the building," said Perrault, explaining how the predominantly glass-based facade acts as a device that dampens the street/structure threshold. The concept of the threshold, however, prevails. More formal spaces branch out from a triple-height entranceway, likened by Perrault to a "theater" that looks out onto a large plaza in front of the two towers it is nestled between.
For the upper reaches of the towers, Perrault prescribed more glass fenestration, the lighting arrangement of which gives the complex its new name. The interiors, meanwhile, were reorganized so that "everybody has a window," thus providing much access to daylight. Come sundown, spotlights illuminate the angled nature of the skin, highlighting its textural qualities. Perrault described the structures' presence on the landscape as “magic mountain.”
"Access" was another key element of his speech. Perrault demonstrated how facades contribute to this in a multifaceted way. This could be seen at the Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea, where the building is built into the site, divided by a wide, sloping walkway that splits the project's two volumes, seemingly carving its way through the landscape.
When designing below grade, Perrault noted that making the most of light is important. The wide path allows light to penetrate fenestration on both sides path. At night, the light emitted from these facades illuminates the outdoor area. Both of these qualities would usually suggest a very open and transparent facade. However, the vertical arrangement of window panels and angular approach to the building obscure views inside.
This is necessary, as the walkway is a public street that extends from the local subway station. The area, however, has become a place for student congregation and activity, most notably being a venue for political protests (one of which attracted 3,000 students) against the incumbent South Korean president. "The design of this was initially a geographical statement and now it is a political story," Perrault noted.
Keeping with East Asia, Perrault pointed to another project in Asia the Fukoku Life Tower in Osaka, Japan, which features a tapering facade that splays out at the base. This was in response to insurance firm Fukoku's desire to share the base of the of the tower with the public, creating what Perrault called "an atrium for the people," likening the form to that of a tree. "We changed the morphology of the basement, twisting the ‘trunk of the tree’ and connecting with the urban fabric which resulted in a very pure geometry," Perrault said. "The world is not flat, and never is the facade!"
Another building discussed by Perrault was the Mechanics Hall at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland. An in-depth article on the building and its facade was featured by John Stoughton of The Architect's Newspaper and can be found here.

Listen to The Architect's Newspaper publisher and Facades+ conference director Diana Darling speak on the latest edition of Everything Building Envelope, a podcast that highlights the latest innovations in the building envelope industry. She discusses the company and its mission changes over the years, which includes the growth of the Facades+ program of conferences and editorial content. You can hear all about the events, who attends, and get up to date on where and when the next big things will be happening. She also gives a sneak peak of our latest project, the Tech+ Expo, a cutting-edge gathering of AEC industry experts and professionals that focuses on how technology is changing how we make and experience our built environment.
Check out the latest episode with Diana Darling here.

The 18th conference in the Facades+ series was presented by The Architect's Newspaper (AN) at Metropolitan West on April 21. With YKK AP as 2016 conference chair, a record-breaking attendance of over 500 design professionals, 60 other sponsoring organizations, and additional workshops held at New York Law School on April 22, Facades+ explored the potentials of new materials, fabrication processes, and design strategies on scales from single windows to urban districts.
Facades+, a mobile event offered several times a year since 2012 (hitting seven U.S. cities during 2016), offers regular updates on high-performance enclosures. Contemporary technologies and materials, participants noted, allow increasing control of light and heat as well as expanding design options; at the same time, specialists argued for tempering expectations about parametric design and renewable power generation.
“Glass is really the material of the 21st century,” asserted morning keynote speaker and 2016 Jane Drew Prize winner Odile Decq, discussing innovative combinations of laminated glass with external sunscreens, embedded textiles, and other elements. Decq led the audience through a series of projects employing transparency, color, and stylistic contrasts, including the Banque Popular de l’Ouest in Rennes (with Peter Rice), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, the Garnier Opera House restaurant in Paris, and the Fangshan Tangshan National Geopark Museum in Nanjing. Architecture can look to the auto industry, she added, for advances in safety, self-cleaning, and energy management that are adaptable to buildings.
In contrast, rising energy concerns mean that “glass is no longer king,” said Buro Happold's Jonathan Sakula; it is part of a broader material repertoire. Stringent codes often make triple glazing difficult to avoid, he noted, despite disadvantages in weight, acoustics, and cost. Responding to an audience question about curtain walls as media for power generation, NY conference co-chair KPF's Shawn Duffy suggested that building-integrated photovoltaics are not yet realizing their potential. Among featured buildings with concrete or masonry façades, standouts included DDG's 12 Warren Street condo clad in Catskill bluestone, discussed by Peter Guthrie, and S9 Architects' 205 Water Street, a gritty neo-brutalist grid of board-formed concrete and exposed steel where, in engineer Stephen DeSimone's pithy phrase, “the structure is the façade.”
Technical briefings covered distinctions between fire-resistive and fire-protective glazing (Tim Nass of Saftifirst), woven-metal shading (Tom Powley of GKD-USA), and a dramatic breakage test by Kuraray's Mark Jacobson comparing polyvinyl butyral and SentryGlas ionoplast interlayers (hammer blows to the edge shattered both panes, but only the latter resisted crumpling). YKK's Bang Ting Tan described a top-down curtain-wall retrofitting method that outperforms conventional procedures in safety, weathertightness, and work-cycle efficiency.
Tension between design ideals and constraints of economics, zoning, context, and client input was a recurrent theme. In a panel on Related's 17-million-square-foot Hudson Yards, William Pedersen commented that “the ability to achieve structural purity in a speculative office building is almost impossible” because dimensional requirements guide formal gestures. Yet the Yards hardly shortchange aesthetics: KPF's chamfered-cornered north and south towers will “perform a choreographed dance” near the High Line and the ETFE cushions of the Culture Shed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro / Rockwell Group, and Tower D by the latter team plus Ismael Leyva Architects will morph from a rectangular base to a quatrefoil as it rises. Neil Thelen (Thelen Design Group) hailed the subtleties in this tower's residential entrance of CNC-milled stone and the curtain-wall panels' complex geometries. Another high point was Thomas Phifer's afternoon keynote presenting designs from the Salt Lake City U.S. courthouse to the Corning Museum of Glass, augmented by a Q&A with AN's Matt Shaw considering local variations in light quality. “The light is the one thing that always surprises you when you build,” noted Phifer.
Enclos's Mic Patterson provided a sobering note in the concluding panel on digital fabrication. Despite impressive recent projects—Hoeweler Yoon's Sean Collier Memorial of milled granite, James Carpenter's Fulton Center Sky Reflector-Net, and Kreysler & Associates/Enclos's fiber-reinforced plastic rainscreens for Snøhetta's San Francisco Museum of Modern Art—the gap between “those buzzwords we have in our industry” and seamy real-world transitions between programs or contractors can be alarming. “The obvious trend is accelerating complexity of the building skin.... How much complexity is sustainable?” Patterson asked. “All you have to do is visit a university architecture program: kids go nuts with Rhino, but nobody's talking craftsmanship.” The precise woodwork in Kahn's Escherick House, he added, “screams, 'Digitize this, sucker!'”—a challenge for everyone to take home.

“We don’t need walls anymore. We need living, breathing systems that provide so much more to the urban realm than keeping in conditioned air and keeping out noise and pollutants.” - Will Wright, AIA|LA

Los Angeles’ 2016 Facades+ Conference, presented by The Architect’s Newspaper, is the 18th event in an ongoing series of conferences and forums that have unfolded in cities across the nation, including New York City, Miami, San Francisco, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, D.C., and Chicago. Held at the L.A. Hotel Downtown, the conference incorporated architects, engineers, fabricators, and innovative material manufacturers into a multidisciplinary two-day event covering the state of building envelope design thinking today.
The daylong symposium kicked off with spirited remarks by Will Wright, Director of Government & Public Affairs at AIA L.A., where he set forth a plea for stronger emphasis on localism and craftsmanship.
Co-chaired by Kevin Kavanagh and Alex Korter of CO Architects, the event included AIA LA, four local architecture schools – UCLA, USC, Woodbury, and Cal Poly Pomona – and a robust collection of Los Angeles-based architecture firms. Four panel discussions throughout the day covered the influence of building envelopes on business, education, structural design, and data analysis. The conversations engaged audience participation through an interactive, web-based tool called Sli.do.
In a morning panel discussion titled “Money Well Spent? An Owner’s Perspective on the Value of Facades,” moderator Kevin Kavanagh spoke with representatives from Kaiser Permanente, Kitchell, and The Ratkovich Company on finding the right balance between aesthetics, energy performance, fiscal responsibility, and efficient project scheduling.
During breaks, conference attendees attended a “Methods+Materials” gallery that highlighted innovative building envelope materials such as electrochromic glass, metal mesh fabric with integrated media display, and ultra-compact surfacing products.
The symposium was highlighted by keynote addresses from Enrique Norten and Eric Owen Moss.

Norten’s opening keynote set forth an argument for a socially responsible architecture integrated into the city via infrastructural, landscape, and public space projects. He cited works of his firm, TEN Arquitectos, which incorporate topographical manipulations of the landscape to establish social spaces of public engagement. His work intentionally camouflages the building envelope into a contextual landscape—be it an adjacent park or cityscape—to dissolve the separation between public and private.
Eric Owen Moss spoke in the afternoon, questioning at what point the conceptual content of a project becomes lost amidst constructional realities. Through recent work of his firm, Eric Owen Moss Architects, he focused on building envelope details that strayed from original design intent, transforming in concept and tectonics as engineers, fabricators, and contractors participated in the process.
In a panel discussion titled “Bytes, Dollars, EUI: Data Streams and Envelopes,” Moderator William Menking, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Architect’s Newspaper, spoke with Atelier 10, Gehry Technologies, and CPG regarding tools and processes facilitating facade analysis and optimization. Sameer Kashyap (Gehry Technologies) shared perhaps the most bewildering stat of the day—that GT was able to script processes which allowed two people to produce over 1200 shop drawings per day for 33 weeks in the coordination of a highly complex facade system.
Paul Zajfen of CO Architects rounded out the day with a presentation titled “Facades: A Manifestation of Client, Culture, Climate,” where he argued for contextually specific design producing a facade that “would not be possible at any other time—and in no other place.”
The symposium was followed on day two with a series of “dialog” and “lab” workshops covering net-zero facade systems, digital fabrication processes, curtain wall design, and advanced facade analysis.
A full roster of organizers and sponsors can be found on the conference website. The Los Angeles event was the first in 2016 of a seven-city lineup, and will be followed by a Facades+AM morning forum in Washington, D.C., on March 10th. The next two-day conference will take place in New York City April 21st and 22nd.

One only had to glance out the window to understand why the 18th floor of Mart Plaza hotel was the perfect venue for the Chicago addition of the Facades+ Conferences. With views of 333 W. Wacker, the Willis Tower, and a handful of new towers under construction, the history of the modern facade was on display. The conversation in the symposium would be equally as rich with local and international speakers.
The morning’s keynote address from Chris Wilkinson of London-based WilkinsonEyre, explored the latest in novel skin technologies from the fantastic flowing domes of Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay project, to the ship like Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, UK. The diverse range of projects presented by Wilkinson were shown along with insights into the process that lead their award winning solutions. In the case of the Mary Rose Museum, the recovered Mary Rose Ship is at the center of the design literally and ideologically. In particular, special care was taken to provide the precise environmental conditions needed to preserve the 420-year-old vessel.
In his afternoon keynote address, Chicago’s John Ronan of John Ronan Architects discussed the political and social impact facades can have on a neighborhood. In the case of two of the public projects presented, brightly colored panel facades at once announce the project as a neighborhood institution, while providing a physical safety barrier in areas of the city where gun violence is too often a part of a high schooler’s life. Using a similar system of metal paneling for decidedly different reasons, Ronan described the iconic nature and tranquil interior provided in his Poetry Foundation building in downtown Chicago. Ronan closed with a detailed look at the high-tech skin of the forthcoming Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship at the Mies van der Rohe–designed Illinois Institute of Technology campus. The project’s inflated ETFE foil cushion skin regulates interior climate by controlling a moveable interior membrane with a variable air pressure system.
Other presentations included a discussion between 2015 AIA Chicago Gold Medal winner Carol Ross Barney, architecture critic Lee Bey, and Chicago Public Building Commission Executive Director Felicia Davis, on building in the public realm for the public good. Maged Guirguis of SOM and James Rose of the Institute for Smart Structures presented AMIE, the Additive Manufacturing/Integrated Energy project, a 3D printed house and vehicle pairing reimagining energy use. The day also included presentations from over 20 other experts in facade design, manufacturing, engineering, and the Methods + Materials gallery.
Day two of the symposium included workshops and presentations from leaders in the global facade dialog, including representatives from Buro Happold, SOM, and Autodesk. The workshops provided for a hands-on, one-on-one, chance to discuss and explore the latest in facade technologies and design practices.
Enrique Norten of TEN Arquitectos and Eric Owen Moss will give keynote addresses at the next Facades+ event on January 28th–29th in Los Angeles.

In September the Chicago-based Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) gathered high-minded designers, developers and engineers for a conference in Shanghai. CTBUH, which often partners with AN on conferences, including our own Facades+ events, invited me to serve as a special media correspondent for the conference, held September 16–19. I spent most of the time conducting video interviews with the symposium guests, which we'll post here on the AN blog as they become available. For now, here' a quick overview of the topics discussed.
The theme of this year's conference was “Future Cities: Towards Sustainable Vertical Urbanism.” It was an especially relevant topic given the venue—held in the elegant, SOM-designed Jin Mao Tower, the conference looked for lessons (and warnings) in the kind of supertall, super-dense development that turned the Lujiazui area of Shanghai's Pudong district from farmland into a world financial center in just 20 years.
Symposium presenters tackled sustainability from several angles. Matthew Clifford, head of energy and sustainability services for North Asia at JLL, stressed building operation and management is as important as design when it comes to energy use and building performance. Cathy Yang, manager of Taipei 101, recounted how “greening” the 101-story building did not turn a profit until the initiative's sixth year, but then made up for it in just three years. The Taiwanese supertall remains the largest LEED Platinum–certified building in the world.
Jianping Gu of Shanghai Tower Construction and Development espoused the benefits of the “stereoscopic” form of his building, which at 2,073 feet is set to become the tallest building in China upon completion next year. “If you compare Shanghai Tower to Taipei 101, Petronas Towers, those were all isolated," Gu said. "There were already two towers in the vicinity when we started. We had to pay particular attention to harmonizing with those buildings. We consider this an issue of sustainability.”
But towering, monumental architecture may not be for everyone. David Gianotten, an OMA partner heading the firm's Hong Kong office, told me OMA gets so many briefs seeking “iconic” design that the word has begun to lose its meaning. “If everything's special, then nothing's special,” he said. That debate continued onto the conference floor, where developers discussed how China's third- and fourth-tier cities should embrace the tall building boom—or whether they should at all.
On the conference's final day, Mun Summ Wong of Singapore-based WOHA talked about the psychological environment of horizontal cities, and how tall buildings should better embrace the human scale. “The idea is to inject more urban life into the high-rise city,” Wong said. “We introduce horizontal movement in the high-rise building because it changes the dynamic. When you talk to the people next to you in an ordinary high-rise, it is considered rude. But in the street, you talk to people, build relationships and bonds.”
Similarly, Yang Wu of the Bund Finance Center warned of the risks of homogeneous skylines. “When I open my eyes in the morning and I am in Shenzhen, I still think I am in Shanghai because they look the same,” he said. “[China is] duplicating buildings and the mistakes of the West. There is focus on building bizarre and tall buildings but ignorance of the connotations–resulting in cold buildings for cold cities. As a developer, I call on architects: you need to have your own independent ideas that bring vitality.”
You can read more about the conference on CTBUH's website. Check back here as we post video interviews.

AN and Enclos' Facades+ PERFORMANCE is only one week away! Register today to join hundreds of like-minded professionals from across the AEC industry as they converge on Chicago from October 24th-25th to discuss the most exciting breakthroughs in high-performance building enclosures. The response has been overwhelming and there are just a few seats remaining, so don’t miss your chance to be part of this groundbreaking event!
Be there for hands-on technology workshops and in-depth discussions of the tools and techniques that are forcing a paradigm shift in the way high-performance architecture is conceived and constructed. Form lasting professional connections with leading innovators from across the industry through our unbeatable networking opportunities. Set new standards for performance in your professional practice. The future of architecture begins at Facades+, so sign up today before the clock runs out!

At AN and Enclos’ Facades+ PERFORMANCE, the most anticipated conference on high-performance building enclosures, we not only provide you with the educational experiences that enable you to push your professional practice into emerging architectural frontiers, but we facilitate the networking opportunities that provide you with connections you need to excel in today’s dynamic professional environment. Be there as hundreds of leading specialists from across the AEC industries gather to share and discuss the latest methods and technologies that are revolutionizing the built landscape.
Whether you are an architect, engineer, fabricator, contractor, materials supplier, developer, educator or student, Facades+ PERFORMANCE is the destination for those interested in the latest breakthroughs in all aspects of high-performance facades. There are only nine days left before the conference touches down on Mies van der Rohe’s IIT Campus in Chicago, so register today to take advantage of this exciting opportunity. Sign up now and mark it down on your calendar: Facades+ PERFORMANCE, Chicago, October 24th-25th!
With networking breaks every two hours, complementary lunches, our jam-packed sponsors gallery, and, to top it all off, a cocktail reception at Rem Koolhaas’ IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Center, the Facades+ agenda was crafted to maximize your ability to form crucial professional connections. Be exposed to new technologies, new methods, new materials, and new ideas as you meet and mingle with representatives from today’s most exciting firms. The clock is ticking, so reserve your space today to begin the next stage in your career.

Facades+ PERFORMANCE is only ten days away! Space is filling up fast, so don’t miss your chance to be part of this groundbreaking, two-day convergence of the industry’s leading innovators. Register today to take advantage of our exclusive educational opportunities, including a day-long symposium examining new perspectives on building skins and sustainable practices, and hands-on technical workshops in the latest design and analysis technologies that are revolutionizing contemporary architecture. And don’t forget about our in-depth, seminar-style dialog workshops, in which leading professionals from across the AEC industry sit down with you to discuss their most innovative recent projects.
Space is limited, and some sessions are already SOLD OUT, so sign up today to reserve you seat! Join the movement that is changing the face of the built environment, only at Facades+ PERFORMANCE – Chicago, Oct. 24-25th!
The conference kicks off next Thursday morning with a keynote address from founding principal of Behnisch Architekten, Stefan Behnisch, as he discusses the evolving role of building enclosures amidst ever-advancing technologies. The symposium will continue throughout the day as representatives from SOM, Thornton Tomasetti, Rojkind Arquitectos, and other leading firms will discuss the most pressing issues in sustainable, high-performance facades. Registered architects can earn 8 AIA LU/HSW credits.
The following day, attendees can customize their schedules to best suit their professional goals. Sign up for two, half-day dialog workshops to join representatives from SHoP Construction, Gehry Technologies, Morphosis, and other industry leaders for intimate discussions of exciting, real-world case studies. Or register for our cutting-edge technology workshops, and join the experts for full-day, project-based instruction in the most relevant applications of breakthrough technologies, like environmental analysis with Grasshopper and Ladybug, and parametric facade design with Dynnamo for Revit—another exciting opportunity to score your AIA credits!
For a complete schedule of events, check out the full Facades+ PERFORMANCE site.

Facades+ PERFORMANCE, presented by The Architect's Newspaper and Enclos, is the latest in our breakthrough series of conferences which seek to address the most pressing issues in the design, fabrication, and construction of cutting-edge, sustainable building enclosures. Join us in Chicago from October 24th-25th as leading professionals from across the AEC industries converge for two days of symposia, panels, and workshops to explore the latest strategies for delivering innovative facades amidst increasing standards of geometric complexity and environmental performance.
Architects, engineers, developers, consultants, and other industry professionals are invited to take part in this exciting event. Be there as German architect Stefan Behnisch, founding partner of Behnisch Architekten, delivers his featured keynote address on the shifting role of the building skin in the wake of emerging technologies. Network with fellow professionals and join in the dialog with representatives from SOM, Gehry Technologies, Morphosis, SHoP, Thornton Tomasetti, and other industry-leading firms.
From cocktails in Rem Koolhaas–designed IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Center, to hands-on workshops in the latest design technologies and intimate discussions of some of today's most exciting projects, this is one event you cannot afford to miss. Register today to join the revolution that is changing the face of our built environment.
“With the challenges we face in the built environment, facades are becoming more and more an integral element of architectural design and engineering,” said Behnisch in a statement. “It is not only the visual appearance but also the performance of a building that depend on the facade.” With dozens of completed projects across Europe and the United States, Behnisch has made a name for himself through the dynamic forms, state-of-the-art facades, and the socially and environmentally sustainable focus of his work. As our featured keynote speaker, Behnisch will draw from his professional experience discuss the evolving functions of facades and the architect’s role within this changing landscape.
“In the search for a more sustainable built environment, we, the architects have to assess the conditions under which our buildings have to be built and the conditions under which they have to perform. Whilst in the second half of the 20th century, the International Style allowed us to build similar buildings within many different climates, we cannot afford to do this anymore. …Today, we have to analyze the climatic, the cultural, the geopolitical, the social, the geographical and the topographical conditions of our potential buildings.”
The seats are filling up fast, so reserve your space today to hear more from Behnisch and the rest of the exciting lineup of presenters at Facades+ PERFORMANCE! For the full schedule of events, check out the complete Facades+ site.

In an environment of escalating demands and expectations for high-performance building envelopes, the need for innovative responses from AEC professionals is ever increasing. But as new building materials, fabrication techniques, and design technologies ceaselessly emerge into the marketplace, the architectural possibilities become dizzying.
At Facades+ PERFORMANCE, the nation's premiere conference for high-performance facades, we strive to keep you up to date with the latest strategies and tools that are revolutionizing the built environment. Join us for two days of cutting edge workshops, panels, and symposia presented by the industry’s leading innovators, and become part of the movement that is transforming the built environment.
Be there as Mic Patterson of Enclos is joined by Keith Boswell and Anwar Hakim of SOM to discuss the process of innovation and the application of emerging building technologies in their afternoon dialog-workshop, “Innovation and The Building Skin.” Space is limited, so reserve your seat today to take part in this and other exciting programs at AN and Enclos’ Facades+ PERFORMANCE, coming to Chicago, October 24th-25th!
"Innovation is no accident," said Patterson in a statement, "it is a creative act requiring discipline, deliberation, and strategic planning; the key is learning to implement and manage the process of innovation." With decades' worth of experience in the study and promotion of the design, fabrication and instillation of advanced facade technologies and structural glass facades, Patterson has dedicated his career to realizing the future of the building skin. After founding ASI Advanced Structures in 1991 and pioneering the use advanced facade technologies in the US, Patterson joined up with Enclos in 2007 when they acquired ASI. He has since worked to establish the Advanced Technology Studio of Enclos in Los Angeles, a think-tank tasked with developing innovative technical and structural solutions to match the ever expanding geometric complexity and performative demands placed upon today's most dynamic facades.
"Today's building programs involve unprecedented demands on the building skin, demands that are driving step-change in facade systems and technology. Innovation is the necessary industry response to these drivers of change. When I consider the current crop of projects we are involved with I am struck by how different they are from the work we were doing five, or even three years ago. Recognizing these differences highlights the trends that are shaping the future of our industry."
Join Mic Patterson has he discusses his experience delivering elegant, economic, high-performance facades amidst the revolution of formal complexity and material diversity that is transforming the AEC industries, and learn the tools to necessary to compete on the crest of innovation. Register today to take part in this and other exciting workshops, panels, and symposia, offered only at Facades+ PERFORMANCE!